Travelers, including recreational and professional cyclists, often require or desire the shipment of a bicycle by air or ground to a travel destination for use at that destination. To ship the bicycle to the travel destination, the bicycle often must be disassembled to some degree by detaching the wheels, the seat, and even the handle bars from the frame in order to fit the bicycle into the shipping container. The disassembler bicycle is then loaded into a hard-sided or soft-sided shipping container, which is placed with other air or ground cargo and shipped to the travel destination.
Existing bicycle shipping containers typically suffer from several drawbacks. First, with respect to shipping containers requiring disassembly of the bicycle prior to loading the bicycle into the shipping container, the disassembly is undesirable because it is time-consuming and often requires special tools. This required disassembly often deters recreational cyclists from bringing their bicycles with them on vacation.
Second, with respect to shipping containers which do not require disassembly of the bicycle, the shipping container is often quite bulky, thereby making the shipping container difficult to maneuver and causing the shipping container to occupy an inordinate amount of space. Such a bulky shipping container may be too large to fit inside some smaller cargo compartments.
Third, existing shipping containers often do not provide adequate stability to the contained bicycles and do not adequately protect the bicycles against damage caused by rough airline and freight handling. This inability to withstand rough airline and freight handling is especially a problem for soft-sided shipping containers. Damage caused to a bicycle during shipment thereof can be quite frustrating to the bicycle owner because the damaged bicycle may be unusable. If the bicycle owner is a professional cyclist and the bicycle is required for immediate use in competition, damage to that bicycle could place the cyclist in a disastrous position if the cyclist cannot quickly repair the damaged bicycle or procure a suitable replacement therefor. In the absence of insurance coverage, damage caused to a bicycle during shipment thereof can be quite costly to the bicycle owner because the damaged bicycle may need to be repaired or replaced in part or in whole. If, however, the bicycle owner is covered by insurance, damage to the bicycle is still costly in terms of the time required to settle the insurance claim.
A need therefore exists for a bicycle shipping container which overcomes the above-noted shortcomings associated with existing bicycle shipping containers.